The ranch gate is one of the most recognizable cultural artifacts of Americana, representing the people and landscapes, history and folklore of the American West. As ranches are consolidated and ranching becomes industrialized, the number of ranches is dwindling and the handcrafted gate is becoming a thing of the past. Across the west, the ruins of derelict gates are the landscape equivalent of ghost towns, signs of once thriving places, now abandoned and left to the elements. Texas Folklife’s newest exhibit, “Ranch Gates of the Southwest,” with photographs by University of Texas design professor, Daniel Olsen and designer Henk Van Assen, is based on their book being published in 2009 by Trinity University Press.

The exhibit invites viewers to explore the resonant visual language and multiple meanings of these American icons. Like a cowboy’s ornate belt buckle, the gate signifies membership in a unique fraternity, and frames the entry into a ranch with a theatrical and ceremonial air. In a desolate, treeless landscape they are signs of human occupancy, a point of transition between the public domain of the road and the private, expansive grazing ground that supports the ranching way of life. Dwarfed by the immensity of the landscapes they inhabit, ranch gates are local monuments to the grand space of the American West.